Tagged: Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock

With five weeks left in the Indiana Senate race, Republican Richard Mourdock is criticizing Congressman Joe Donnelly for supporting the agenda of congressional Democrats and President Obama in a new statewide ad.

The 30-second spot continues the road motif of the campaign, and highlights that Donnelly voted for the stimulus package, bank bailout and Affordable Care Act. For most of the general election Donnelly has trumpeted himself as a moderate, but the GOP and Mourdock are trying to undercut that by showing the congressman's ties to Democratic policies nationally.

Check it out:

Less than six weeks before Election Day, Democrat Joe Donnelly and Republican Richard Mourdock are in a statistical dead heat for Indiana’s U.S. Senate seat.

The Howey-DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll puts Donnelly ahead with 40 percent compared to Republican Richard Mourdock’s 38 percent, which is within the 3.5 percent margin of error. The survey of 800 likely voters follows many other polls that have depicted the contest as a neck-and-neck race to replace outgoing Sen. Dick Lugar.

Close to $10 million has been spent in the race thus far, and outside groups, such as the conservative  Super PAC Crossroads GPS, has spent close to $1 million this week opposing Donnelly's candidacy.

But Donnelly campaign spokeswoman Elizabeth Shappell says her candidate’s two-point edge shows Hoosier voters are rejecting Mourdock’s approach and the heavy amounts being spent to defeat him.

"This is the same man who said that the highlight of politics to him inflict his opinion on others, who has questioned the constitutionality of Social Security and Medicare," she says. "Joe Donnelly is the true bipartisan, common sense candidate in this race and he has the record to prove it."

U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Ok., campaigned on behalf of fellow Republican and Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock at an Indianapolis hospital on Monday to outline alternatives to the Affordable Care Act.

The Mourdock campaign outline its health care plan that would include making all health care expenses tax deductible, allow insurance companies to compete across state lines and enact additional medical malpractice insurance and liability reforms.

Mourdock has been running against President Obama's health care overhaul since the GOP primary, and has called the legislation a disaster.

From the Mourdock campaign:

The Senator and Mr. Mourdock huddled with physicians and administrators at the Indiana Orthopedic Hospital (IOH) to discuss the legislation’s impact on their practices and patients.

"This disastrous legislation is killing jobs, pushing folks off their insurance plans and actually raising the cost of health care. It’s also killing providers and damaging our hospitals,” said Mourdock. “We need to repeal it. But, just as important, we need to replace it with market-oriented, patient-and-doctor driven reforms that actually reduce health care costs,” he continued.

Reality TV star and real estate mogul Donald Trump is endorsing Republican Richard Mourdock in the Indiana Senate race.

The billionaire conservative has become a controversial figure for questioning President Obama's birth certificate while he briefly flirted with a White House bid. For the most part, Trump has been lampooned for embracing the so-called "birther" movement and observers have criticized his remarks as a publicity stunt.

A conservative super PAC largely funded by the billionaire Koch brothers has pulled television ads in Indiana's Senate race attacking Democrat Joe Donnelly, but political strategists with the group will continue their plans to target the race.

Americans for Prosperity reserved airtime to assist Republican Richard Mourdock in the closely watched contest, where polling has shown it is a statistical tie. Last month, the group launched a website against Donnelly, highlighting his votes in Congress but reports say the super PAC has a disagreement over how to target the congressman.

In the Indiana Senate race, Democratic Congressman Joe Donnelly has released a poll showing a statistical tie with Republican State Treasurer Richard Mourdock in the fall election.

The internal survey of 601 likely voters shows Donnelly leading by 1 percentage point with 44 percent over Mourdock at 40 percent and Libertarian Andrew Horning with 4 percent. Indiana is leaning Republican in the presidential race and will likely go to Mitt Romney in the presidential race, but the Senate contest is gaining national attention for its competitiveness.

Donnelly says the race will be competitive and close until November, but that his polling shows voters are exhausted with partisan bickering in Congress.

"You know it is about as close to a tie ballgame as you can get. And what that’s about is the people of Indiana just want solutions. They don’t want people fighting or being extremely partisan. We want more jobs and more opportunity, and people to work together," he says. "And that’s why I think we’ve been successful to this point because we’re talking about issues."